As food prices remain high, the Trump administration has made it easier for farmers to hire foreign guest workers and to pay them less. Now, other industries with large immigrant workforces also are asking for relief as they combat labor shortages and raids.
Visas for temporary foreign workers are a quick fix with bipartisan support in Congress. And Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’ office told Stateline that “streamlining” visas for both agricultural and other jobs is a priority for the Trump administration.
Net migration to the UK has fallen to levels last seen before Brexit. The latest ONS figures show net migration reached just over 200,000 in the year ending in June. This marks a 78% decline over the past two years, from a peak of more than 900,000.
President Donald Trump premised his mass deportation agenda on the idea that he will be “returning millions and millions of criminal aliens.” Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem has repeatedly claimed that they are arresting the “worst of the worst.” New nonpublic data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lea
As the Trump administration’s immigration dragnet intensified in June, a nurse in Portland, Oregon, left work one midafternoon and drove to a nearby detention facility to voice his opposition. Federal agents had set off smoke grenades, driving away many protesters at the front of the facility, but Vincent Hawkins lifted his megaphone anyway.
“You should stop and think about what you’re doing!”
OPINION — Zohran Mamdani, a Ugandan-born New York State Assembly member, was just elected Mayor of New York City, the largest city in the U.S. We in the U.S. take this for granted that a naturalized U.S. citizen could aspire to hold prominent federal, state and local positions. But this is unique for the U.S. and a select few countries that welcome legal migration and provide naturalized citizens with the same rights available to natural-born citizens.
I’ve spent almost two decades living in other countries and can assure you that in most countries, there is no clear path for foreign-born inhabitants to acquire citizenship and hold office. In fact, even buying property is problematic in many of these countries.
Except for the president and vice president, who must be natural-born citizens (Article 11, Section 1, Clause 5 of the Constitution), naturalized citizens can hold offices in the Congress and in federal, state and local governments. Indeed, Madeleine Albright, a naturalized citizen born in Czechoslovakia, was Secretary of State and Henry Kissinger, born in Germany, was National Security Advisor and Secretary of State and Elaine Chao, born in Taiwan, was Secretary of Labor and Transportation. These are just a few prominent Americans who became naturalized citizens and went on to serve our country with distinction.
Currently, Ilhan Omar, born in Somalia, is a member of the House of Representatives from Minnesota and Senator Mazie K. Hirono, born in Japan and representing Hawaii, are two of 30 members of the 119th Congress who were not born in the U.S. The list of naturalized Americans who contributed to our nation’s economic growth, academic excellence, athletic prowess and the arts is awe-inspiring. Indeed, our country’s open-door policy has contributed to making the U.S. the “shining city on a hill.”
This open-door policy of legal migration has served our Republic well. What our elected officials must ensure is that we continue to care for all the people and that we ensure that terrorists, narco-traffickers, criminals and state-supported proxies are prevented from entering our country and causing harm to our people and institutions.
The Cipher Brief brings expert-level context to national and global security stories. It’s never been more important to understand what’s happening in the world. Upgrade your access to exclusive content by becoming a subscriber.
This is a list of just a few of the domestic law enforcement issues requiring immediate attention from federal, state and local authorities, and the representatives elected by the people to ensure that the proliferation of crime in the U.S. is managed on a priority basis.
Drug Trafficking: There are over 100,000 overdose deaths annually, largely driven by synthetic opioids like fentanyl, methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin entering the U.S. from Mexico, Columbia and South American cartels.
Human Trafficking and Exploitation: Transnational criminal networks traffic migrants, women, and children for labor and sex across borders, including into the U.S.
Cybercrime and Financial Theft: Russian, Chinese, North Korean and East European cybercriminal groups target U.S. individuals, corporations, and infrastructure with ransomware attacks, identity theft, and bank fraud, costing U.S. companies and consumers tens of billions of dollars annually. Such cyberattacks also threaten critical infrastructure – energy grids, hospitals, and water systems.
Money Laundering and Corruption: Criminal organizations launder billions through U.S. real estate, shell companies, cryptocurrency, and luxury goods.
Threats to National Security: Transnational criminal groups often collaborate with hostile states or terrorist networks, often blurring the line between organized crime and geopolitical conflict.
Economic and Social Costs: Drug deaths, cyber losses, law enforcement costs, and social disruption likely exceed hundreds of billions of dollars annually, with communities suffering from increased violence, addiction, and corruption.
Despite the efforts of the FBI, DEA, DHS and Treasury, the adaptability of criminal groups and the global nature of technology and finance - and the support of countries determined to cause harm to the U.S. -- makes enforcement increasingly difficult.
The U.S. experiment with an “open door policy” for legal migration to the U.S. has been a great success. It is why the U.S. is the “shining city on a hill.” But we should not take this for granted. We and our elected representatives must work even harder to rid the country of organized crime and defeat our adversaries who wish for us harm.
This column by Cipher Brief Expert Ambassador Joseph DeTrani was first published in The Washington Times
Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief because National Security is Everyone’s Business.
The Department of Homeland Security says it intends to add state driver’s license information to a swiftly expanding federal system envisioned as a one-stop shop for checking citizenship.
The plan, outlined in a public notice posted Thursday, is the latest step in an unprecedented Trump administration initiative to pool confidential data from varied sources that it claims will help identify noncitizens on voter rolls, tighten immigration enforcement and expose public benefit fraud.
This year, when states began using an expanded Department of Homeland Security system to check their voter rolls for noncitizens, it was supposed to validate the Trump administration’s push to harness data from across federal agencies to expose illicit voting and stiffen immigration enforcement.
Founder and CEO Priyanka Kulkarni, fourth from right, and members of the Casium team at AI House in Seattle. (Sam Fu Photo)
Seattle startup Casium, which uses artificial intelligence to streamline the work visa application process, raised $5 million in seed funding.
The round was led by San Francisco-based Maverick Ventures, with participation from Seattle’s AI2 Incubator, GTMfund, Success Venture Partners, and Jake Heller, co-founder of Casetext, now part of Thomson Reuters.
Casium, spun out of AI2 Incubator in April 2024, is led by founder and CEO Priyanka Kulkarni, a former Microsoft scientist and entrepreneur-in-residence at AI2 Incubator who wanted to fix a problem that she herself experienced while applying for an EB-1 visa.
“Casium started from frustration, from my own experience with a process that was confusing, opaque, and full of endless back and forth,” Kulkarni wrote in a LinkedIn post on Monday. “What began as a personal pain point became a mission to build something better. Today, that mission has grown into a solution helping global talent and the companies that hire them move forward faster with transparency and expert-led precision at every step.”
Applying for work visas requires applicants and employers to make their case to the U.S. government for why the individual is deserving of the opportunity, citing education, work experience and other factors.
The process and paperwork can be time-consuming even with the help of an outside law firm, and Kulkarni’s goal was to shrink the timeline from months down to days.
The Casium platform uses algorithms to first assess the best route for an applicant, which could be a temporary work visa or seeking permanent residency. The startup uses AI to autonomously gather information for an application and prepare the document. Casium works with immigration attorneys to guide the process and represent the visa applicants.
Casium offers initial assessments for free and charges a flat fee for filings based on visa type and case complexity, Business Insider reported. Kulkarni said the company is also developing a subscription model to give employers more options for ongoing support.
The startup, which employs nine people, says it is already working with employers from early stage startups to Series F companies and has assisted hundreds of candidates through visa assessments, compliance reviews, and actual filings, and maintains what it calls “an exceptionally high approval rate.”
“Every filing and every approval is a reminder of why this work matters,” Kulkarni said in calling out Casium’s customers on LinkedIn.
The spotlight on work visas ratcheted up last month when President Donald Trump announced an executive order outlining a $100,000 fee for H-1B visas, which allow companies to hire highly skilled foreign workers in “specialty occupations” such as software engineering, data science, and other STEM fields.
Casium said more than 442,000 workers compete for just 85,000 H-1B visa slots annually. The high-stakes process underscores the company’s potential appeal.
Other companies are working to improve the legal immigration experience — including fellow Seattle startup Boundless Immigration, which spun out of Pioneer Square Labs in 2017 and helps immigrants connect with lawyers and file applications for spousal visas and U.S. citizenship. Boundless has raised more than $43 million and is one of the largest consumer-focused family immigration companies.
A dramatic voiceover video shared by the White House and President Donald Trump claims to show immigration agents responding to the “mess” in Chicago as the Republican president seeks to justify deploying Texas National Guard troops to the Democrat-run city.
But an AFP investigation found that the video is littered with outdated footage highlighting drug busts, arrests and deportation raids in other states, including Florida, Texas, South Carolina, Nebraska, California, and Arizona.
When the Supreme Court recently allowed immigration agents in the Los Angeles area to take race into consideration during sweeps, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that citizens shouldn’t be concerned.
“If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States,” Kavanaugh wrote, “they promptly let the individual go.”
Login
